Originally put this in as an edit to previous post, but it got long and you might have missed it:

[ETA: Perhaps a clarification is in order. When I refer to 'bad reasons', what I'm referring to has a lot to do with the problem I mention above that 'what was advertised and what occurred were very different'. For example, I imagine that ChrisCMU, like many of us others, had read Szew's two main posts and had *that* kind of reasoning in mind when he submitted his template and for what he expected to hear as the 'reasons' for whatever score was given to his template. But when, on the day of the stream, Szew and others exhibited a *different* kind of reasoning, with different standards than posted in the main posts, from ChrisCMU's perspective, those are *bad* reasons, because they are not the kinds of reasons he 'signed up for' when he entered the contest. I hope I'm not putting words/thoughts into ChrisCMU's mouth/mind, I'm kind of projecting how I think about it into how I imagine he probably also thinks about it. I could be wrong, of course. Grain of salt, and all that.

Now, from Szew's and others' perspectives, maybe those reasons he gave are *good* reasons, but that can only really be the case if they are not going by the kind of reasoning that is described in the initial contest posts by Szew.

So, if you bought into the type of contest in the OP and the first follow-up post, then the stream can feel like a bait-and-switch scam. But if you didn't really buy into that type of contest, but the kind of contest Szew had in mind when he commentated, then maybe you'd be confused as to why anyone would kick up a storm over their silly little templates which suck (from your POV) anyway.

TL;DR: It's all about "managing expectations". (one of those buzzwords/phrases that pretty much means what it says)]

Kain's template ratings in various categories from my perspective:

Complexity: 9/10 (How long it takes to truly understand how to play it a very high level) - I find this template more difficult to understand than a standard template, but this is likely due to the fact that I am playing with many settings I am unaccustomed to. I like this new challenge though. I worry I may rate this as less complex when I play a few games on it. Ways to improve this: I think as I play this template some more (and I definitely plan to), I will find a better value for the reinforcement card that adds to the complexity of the template.

Fun factor: 3/10 - I see this as being a long, drawn out game, as Local Deployment games often tend to be. Ways to improve this: Smaller map? This would make for shorter games which is a plus on Local Deployment but would also lower the complexity. Light fog? Players would have a better idea of when the game is over, and they could surrender accordingly. I believe this rating comes down to a personal preference.

Innovation: 10/10 - Auto distribution, Local Deployment, Low starting armies, low base income, 12 picks per a player, an interesting use of cards. This template definitely is one of a kind.

Luck factor (How much does luck factor in to this template?): This is something that I honestly cannot rate currently. This is not an easy template to play at a top level on first try without a lot of calculating, and I haven't played any games on it yet. To really determine this, we will need two players who play the template well. I'd anticipate giving this template a 7-8/10 due to the fact that autodistribution can make or break you (although with 12 picks, this is less likely than many autodistribution games). This is one of the strongest auto distribution templates I've seen in terms of eliminating auto distribution luck. I think manual distribution would take away from the other settings though, so I suggest sticking with auto distribution.

Replayability: 7/10 - My prediction is that as this template is played more, and players learn the settings well, the games will grow boring, as the best moves will be somewhat obvious.

This would be my ratings currently on each of the main areas. I think it is a fine template right now, and has potential to become stronger. I rated it 7/10 overall based in it's current state. I will definitely try to test it more, and see what we can do to tweak it and make it better. I could easily see it becoming an 8 or a 9 out of 10 based on my ratings. Innovation is definitely the strong point of this template, and in my opinion, the only place where it is really lacking is the fact that it is relatively boring and static. As you can tell, I am not a big fan of local deployment, yet I believe it adds new strategy in.

Keep in mind that all my ratings will be subjective and are not necessarily accurate. I try to do my best to be objective, but I can't guarantee that I will succeed in this regard.

I don't think Szeweningen advertised any different than he actually rated the templates.

Obviously, I disagree. Moving on....

The issue of this is that his opening posts are relatively vague, leaving him with the power to grade the templates as he wished.

On this I really disagree. He left the criteria *very* open, which means he *does not* have the power/right to arbitrarily tighten/close-up those criteria later on. Especially when he writes things like this: " i'll let the creators decide what they think is strategic and what is not."

That is pretty much saying, "Hey guys, show me whatever you got. If you can show why you think it's strategic, I'll go by your standards."

Now, I happened to interpret that more narrowly, as "I guess it's up to the scenario maker to put forward a good case [for strategicness]," but that's just my own interpretation, a personal challenge to myself to try to make a 100% luck template that was clearly strategic in some way. But some other participant needn't have adopted that narrower interpretation. They might have taken Szew's post at its word; literally, "creators decide what they think is strategic and what is not."

To then go on to judge it according to "Well, actually, what you think is strategic is entirely irrelevant, and really it's just up to my personal whims that I happen to be feeling today," is *changing the deal* between contest host and contest participant.

If he had originally said, "it's up to my personal whims that I happen to be feeling that day", then no one here would have a right to complain if he did exactly that. But he didn't write that originally. Instead, he gave very broad and open terms. That's not giving *himself* free rein, that's giving the *participants* free rein. To later renege on that comes across as a 'cheating' move, a broken promise.

Now, let me make it clear that I don't actually think all the participants should have been given free rein on what 'strategic' means, and I also don't think that Szew actually *meant* to give them free rein. I'm saying that what he wrote *could be interpreted that way*, and at the very least it implies a much more open interpretation of what 'strategic' might mean than the interpretations given by you or Beren, or for that matter, by the actual judges on the day of the stream (personally I felt MoD was most 'in the spirit' of the original posting, though; I find myself much more in agreement with his votes and reasonings than the others').

I think a better rating system should be put in place next time

Honestly, I wouldn't have a problem if he/whoever just openly said, "it'll be based on my own personal judgment of 'strategic'". Fair enough. I would be less likely to try to submit something to such a contest, though, unless perhaps it was someone whose judgments tended to be ones I highly valued. What attracted me to the contest in the first place was the openness of what could qualify as 'strategic', especially in connection with using different/unusual settings, which he also made clear (well it was *written* clearly, anyway): "I really don't want to put in specific rules for settings.... possibly some things we think of that are not strategic on a general principle, may work in a very specific situation.... Maybe there will be some other new and original ideas or a mixture of those."

That's pretty damn open! It's in stark contrast to Beren's "I don't think using a setting for the sake of using it qualifies as a reason to use it," philosophy of what settings should be allowed.

I'm not against a more sophisticated rating system. My main concern would simply be consistency. If you say you're going to judge by criterion X, then you should follow through on that and judge by criterion X. If you say that X will not be strict, then you shouldn't later judge X strictly. It's about keeping one's word, and "managing expectations".

If these players had received good scores without any reasons, I highly doubt we would see as many complaints.

This does not contradict what I said, though. I didn't say that "any score, given without reasons, is what people are complaining about", I said "If good reasons had been given for low scores, and the scores reflected those reasons, I don't think anyone would have complained about it. It's when *bad* reasons are used to justify low scores that people feel cheated, betrayed, insulted, etc."

I think it is not the players rating the templates that are flawed, but rather the rating system itself.

Maybe others feel that way, perhaps, I don't know. But I suspect they felt more like I felt, which is more about the *changing* of the expected criteria of judgment to something entirely unexpected that is more at the heart of it. (Also, I think others felt it more strongly than I did, because I really didn't care or expect to get a decent/winning score in the first place. I had less emotion invested in the outcome. But I *did* expect to get a *good reason* for whatever score I got. I may not have *complained* if I got a high score for no good reason, but I certainly wouldn't have had any respect/pride in such a meaningless score; I would have probably suspected the judges just didn't really care about the template and were just trying to 'be nice' with a meaninglessly high score, kinda like those 'participation' ribbons they give little kids in kiddie competitions.)

Again, if Szew had said up front, "This contest will be judged by my personal judgments/whims alone", and I had submitted my template and gotten 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10, or any number in between, I would have been fine with that because, hey, I 'signed up' to get Szew's personal judgment, and even if his reasons were dumb, that's fine, those are his own personal reasons. I might lose respect for his opinions in such a case, but I wouldn't complain about the contest. What's to complain about?

It's the switcheroo that stung. The bait-and-switch (or so it seemed from my/our POV).

In many cases, they used solid reasoning

They just didn't use the same *kind* of reasoning they advertised they were going to use.

Thx JSA! I really appreciate that you detaily analysed my template. And I am really glad that you think that it does work! I hope you will find more when we try it in 1v1 game. Three things to discus now:

1) Local Deployment - yeah, I dont like it too. But the main thought behind this template was to allow each player to develop only one territory (out of 12 randomly given) and the LD (combined with low initial income) is nescessary to implement it. Of course LD has conisiderable drawbacks (turns take longer for instace) but it also has it own strenghts (like the fact that one have to plan his attacks in advance by gathering troops in certain areas) which may add for strategic value.

2) Replayability - my main aim was not to awe community by "look how crazy template I have made!". The reason for implemanting randomly given territories was to ensure every game looks different (the whole rest of this template was then designed to reduce the luck factor from random distribution which was mainly achieved by allowing to develop only one (or maximally two) territories). Therefore on every game players start with different set of randomly given territories out of which they choose the best one to develop, which is also besed on initial decisions of their enemies (picking phase is "open" due to spy card given at the start and lasts practically 3 turns- it is ment to allow player to choose his starting territory based on the information what his opponent is planing). Therefore I think that this template should not suffer from reduced replayability. The main problemm here be the map though.

3) The map I have choosen worked well in 4players FFA's played on this template, but only lately I have realised that it is not perfect for 1v1 - it lacks "around the world" interconnections (like from the left to the right edge). When the number of players was greater it was not the problem, as participants naturally tried to avoid starting in the middle of the map (in order not to end up between two enemies). Things look different in 1v1 - since there is only one enemy, players tend to avoid corners because if they were "cut off" there from the rest of their map by their enemy, this could reduce thier potential to develop This favours starting close to the middle part of the map which in turn decrases the number of potential strategies and decreases the replayability (a bit). Ill look for another map though to solve that issue (any suggestions?)

Edited 12/5/2015 09:40:04

I wrote:

I don't think any of those with complaints are actually complaining about their scores. They are complaining about the *reasoning* (or, more accurately, the *lack* of reasoning (stemming from not actually trying them out)) that went into those judgments.

@JSA:
Okay, I think I now understand why you wrote what you wrote in response to this. I probably used wording/phrasing that was unclear and didn't communicate what I really meant.

When I said "lack of reasoning", I didn't mean literally "no reasons were given". I meant "reasons were given but they were not 'reasonable'; i.e. the person giving the 'reasons' was not actually 'reasoning' well; i.e. there was a lack of 'reason', not a lack of 'reasons'."

Hope that clarifies, and hopefully shows the connection to my later emphasis on 'bad reasons' as opposed to 'good reasons'.

Edited 12/5/2015 09:42:16